as he alone could touch it, persuaded the Duchess of Queensberry to entertain the Dean with letters, and was tireless in transmitting the kindly messages of his friends. Nor did he forget Swift in the very presence of death. "He asked for you a few hours before," wrote Pope, and Swift showed his sensibility by endorsing Pope's letter, a sad messenger of woe, with the words: "On my dear friend Mr Gay's death; received December 1 5th, but not read till the 20th, by an impulse foreboding some misfortune."
It mattered not which of the four Swift addressed. He wrote to him fully and faithfully what was in his mind. Now and again he seems to remember that Pope is vastly superior to him in the artistry of verse. Of this superiority he makes full confession in the poem on his own death:
In Pope I cannot read a line.
But with a sigh I wish it mine;
When he can in one couplet fix
More sense than I can do in six.
But otherwise his comradeship knows no
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